Technology

For most part SplitVR is using existing, commercially available hardware to build large scale VR system that pretty much anybody could order from the internet. We decided against creating proprietary headsets and controllers from the ground up to focus our development efforts on one aspect of VR systems: the large scale camera based tracking. There are major companies to develop headsets and we do think they are pretty good at it.

So what we do decided to build from the ground up isour camera tracking system and network code:

Tracking is absolutely key for player immersion. We have to sample position as much as it is possible as accurately as possible. Any glitch in this is creates a jump in the virtual world. Too many jumps and the immersion breaks, players can’t focus on the experience as motion sickness slowly kicks in and eventually they puke all over the floor.

Network code is also extremely important as data of movement have to flow incredibly fast so the slightest nod is immediately reflected in the virtual world. This means the system have to detect the movement, determine the amount, calculate the new position, send all this over to the game engine, render the new image and send it back to your headset so fast that you won’t even notice this happening. This is under 10 milliseconds.

With this combination we are able to create a large area tracking solution that can be scaled to any size. With utilizing cameras the possibilities for full body tracking is absolutely real.

ABOUT

SplitVR is a large scale tracking system that allows the VR tracking of 50 sqm+ areas in a custom fitted headset. The technology can be deployed in a matter of days to open a large scale virtual reality arcade. Our company can also provide game content to.

SplitVR has grown out of Nemesys Games a game development studio for over ten years, based in Budapest, Hungary. Observing many trends in the games industry like MMOs, social games, mobile etc… trying VR for the first time we immediately knew this is different. This is a game changer.

Beginnigs We have seen how immersive VR could be and we immediately knew that this is what we want to do. The first impressions of the very early VR experiences just blew us away for like 3 days. But soon after that we felt like

Something is missing! We were just bystanders in the virtual world, spectators without any means to actually accomplish anything. We figured if we would have a controller things would be better. And it did for 5 more days.

But the feeling came back! Than it dawned. You want to stand up and walk around. After all what good is being in a new world but handcuffed to a chair.

And then it all came together! Real immersion on top of a cliff, in a paraglider, or just on a beautiful field chasing the butterflies. This is what we are about:

With us you can enter the imaginary worlds you have been dreaming of.

Backpack PC is ready to use!

The big user test: PlayIT!

PlayIT, Budapest is the biggest consumer game show in Hungary attracting over 20 000 visitors on one single day. It is huge! Maybe not as big as Gamescom, but surely not as old either. In Eastern Europe where people tend to be a little more sceptic and money is undoubtedly less than in the western world this is almost an unimaginable number. Almost as unimaginable as the wait time was at our booth!

We had seen major events in the past and waited in lines to see a new releases, but it is one thing to see it and an entirely another, to experience it when people are lining up to try your product. From start to closing time there was a constant wait time of over 2 hours, despite the fact that we purposefully made our experiences very short (1,5 minutes in playtime). We had 2 experiences at the show going for a little more than 10 hours each giving a chance to a total of 1100+ visitors to try virtual reality.

Both our technology development, the Large Area Tracking System was on display and our content development for the Vive. Without major problems both systems worked fine for the entire duration of the show.

It gives us great pleasure and very good reinforcement that the feedback was all positive by our players!

Post Mortem: Veletech Show

Veletech Show was a great success in every aspect for SplitVR. Over 500 visitors have tried the two VR experience we had on display. From start until the closing of the show we had to deal with enormous demand, there was a constant 20-30 minute wait time to get in to our booth. The feedback is very positive even though we only had a short time preparing the demos.

Technically went everything great too. The systems worked for 8 hours with minor glitches only, we had to do few minutes of recalibration pauses without major stopage. Some cameras were acting up, but that is acceptable with a prototype. The new cameras we have on order will fix this issue as well.

Besides the lot of visitors we also experienced a lot of interest from media. Our CEO gave two TV and a radio interview along with numerous talks to print media journalists.

We learnt a lot and will improve on the experiences for upcoming shows in the future!

Meet us at PlayIT

SplitVR will be attending PlayIT Show on 30 April. Visitors of the show will be able to try our large scale VR system as well as the Western Shooter game we have been developing for HTC Vive. There will also be a major announcement on the main stage. Stay tuned for more info!

Major Demo at Veletch Show

We will be presenting our large scale VR system at Veletech technology conference and trade show tomorrow. We created a Japanese garden scene in a 3m by 6m area which is almost the double what the best consumer VR systems can cover nowadays. We expect it to be a major stress test of our Technology. In 2 minutes sessions over 200 visitors will be able to give our VR system a try.

First user tests

We have just completed the first user tests with a truly room scale VR setup. Also our players had the chance to test drive our very first gun controller too in our Western Shooter game.